Fiesta Bowl is good consolation prize for OSU

Even though Ohio State didn’t make it into the College Football Playoff, landing a berth on New Year’s Day in the Fiesta Bowl against Notre Dame is a pretty good gig.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Fiesta Bowl draws higher TV ratings than one or maybe both playoff games on Dec. 31.

After all, three of the highest-rated TV matchups this season have featured the Buckeyes.

You can bet that Rose Bowl organizers wish they had Ohio State playing Stanford rather than Iowa, which draws paltry TV ratings.

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Do you think there might be too many bowl games this season?

Nebraska, Minnesota, San Jose State all enter bowl games with 5-7 records since a whopping 80 FBS teams were needed to fill the record 41 bowl games (including the CFP national title game).

I like to watch bowl games, too, but teams with losing records?

It’s ridiculous.

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Two coaches who never would have considered taking a losing team to a bowl game were Woody Hayes and Ara Parseghian.

Carmen Cozza played for two seasons under Hayes and one under Parseghian at Miami of Ohio, and I recently asked him which of those legendary coaches he modeled himself after during his own hall of fame coaching career at Yale University.

“Woody was demanding and well organized,” said Cozza. “That helped me in my coaching career. He also cared about his players’ well-being … that, too, made an impression on me.

“Ara became my coach his first year as a head coach – I was a senior,” Cozza added. “I came back the next year and worked on my master’s degree, and he offered me a graduate assistant’s position as a coach. Until then I wasn’t sure what I wanted to pursue. That year as a grad assistant gave me an answer to what I wanted to do – coach. Both Woody and Ara were great coaches and had a big influence on my career.”

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Trivia Time – After winning a national football title in 1968, Ohio State went 8-1 in 1969.

This week’s question – Which fellow Miami University graduate did Carmen Cozza succeed as Yale’s head football coach in 1965?